


what we call ourselves

by rib14



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, it's in second person so get ready for that, kales said it works tho so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 21:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14756769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rib14/pseuds/rib14
Summary: addax dawn has collected a few different names throughout his life.





	what we call ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is sponsored by: prescription adderall! it lets you actually sit down and write the fic you've been wanting to write for months!

You’re eleven years old when you’re given a new name. Addax. You don’t know what it means but you like the way it feels in your mouth, opened mouth vowels stopped by hard consonants. Your new name means you’re important, you have responsibility, you’re going to help. You’re going to fight. You don’t think about your old name much anymore. They don’t let you. The Diaspora doesn’t like for its citizens to remember their candidates are anything besides what they are now, that they were ever anything before.

You become the candidate of Peace early in the conflict with OriCon, when their old candidate is killed, by war or by Peace you don’t know. When you step inside the divine for the first time you feel an unsteady weight placed on your shoulders, one that has never left the periphery of your mind since. It feels like a boulder about to tumble down a hill, or a gun aimed right towards its target where all you need is to pull the trigger. 

You know, you know with all your heart that your job is to stop that from happening, but still whenever you’re frustrated, or angry, or even bored, that whisper shows up in the back of your mind, one that grows stronger as the war gets longer and deadlier, to just pull the trigger. Everyone will be better off. You can stop this war.

 

Your name gains a new meaning when you join the Joint Task Force. You’ve never been a diplomat before, though Peace has shown you visions of their past candidates being expert negotiators—that would have been your role if not for the Golden War. 

The OriCon ace pilot—Rethal—calls you Candidate when you meet him, a show of respect with the tiniest hint of a smirk that immediately intrigues you. It only makes sense to want to know your rival.

You see him again, and again, and again, because you’re both important figures and you have important things to talk about. Sometimes you don’t even talk about important things, you just sit and tell each other stories about your pasts, or make stupid jokes, sometimes just sit together in silence. You spend a lot of time looking at his face, cataloguing the deep brown of his eyes, the freckles on his nose, the light emanating from his smile. It’s nice to have a friend.

The first time he calls you Addax—just Addax, no Candidate preceding it—you’ve only known each other for a few weeks. You’re walking into the hangar bay and Rethal is in there, working on his Panther. He turns around and his eyes light up. “Hey, Addax.” he says, like it’s nothing, but it feels like the world just shifted beneath your feet. You can’t help but smile at him.

“Hey, Jace. How’s it going?” you say back, not sure if you mean to or not but it’s too late now. 

Jace beams. “Oh, you know. I’m good.” He bites his lip.

You nod, not sure where to go from there. “I—I gotta go,” you say, and walk right back out the giant metal doors, completely forgetting what you went in there to do in the first place, and mostly thinking about what you wouldn’t do just to make Jace smile like that again.

You realize you’re falling in love when it’s already too late. Counterweight is only a few days of travel away and everyone is fully immersed in planning for the end of this mission. Jace is unbelievably anxious and you wish you could kiss that frown right off his face, but you don’t want to make things any more difficult for him, so you just ignore the way your heart wants to burst when he looks at you as best you can as you both plan for the mission that will almost definitely lead to your deaths.

And then you’re on Counterweight. Jace has the superweapon. He doesn’t follow the plan. He won’t give you the superweapon, he’s decided that only he knows best. That’s when you feel it, no longer a whisper but a voice at speaking volume, unfeeling and cold but rational and persuasive.  _ Pull the trigger, end the chaos. This faulty cog is unimportant. You  _ can _ end this. _

And you do.

 

Your next name is not given, it’s earned. A few months after what they’re now calling the “miracle”—the end of the war, it turns out to be, almost like Order is in your head still, taunting you with their own words—you get back in touch with Natalya, and you take up the offer you declined what feels like a lifetime ago. 

You begin your role as a Rapid Evening agent with passionate loyalty, the only way you know how to belong anywhere. You’re a quick learner and it doesn’t take long for you to become familiar with the strange intricacies of piloting a RE mech and the even stranger feeling of not being in a war. The Evening as an organization doesn’t care about its agents any more than the Diaspora or a divine cares about their candidate—but the people in it do. The other members of the Rapid Evening don’t see you as a candidate or an asset or an obstacle to be overcome—you’re a peer, a coworker, maybe even a friend. Even so, it’s hard to let anyone get close; ten years of patriotic solitude can’t be unlearned overnight, especially with the memory of how it ended the last time seared into your mind with clinical efficiency.  _ It had to be done. The war would’ve gone on forever,  _ you tell yourself, thinking maybe this time it will numb the ache you feel deep in your chest whenever you think about  _ him _ .

You try not to spend too much time thinking at all. Of course, you fail tremendously at this, for the same reason you sometimes find yourself talking in a calming voice to your new RE mech when you get stressed on a mission. It’s hard to break old habits. 

Sometimes you drown yourself in memories of that day on Counterweight. The worst part is how little it hurts. You can only ever feel it the way you did then, bright with the stark blues and greens of Order, the Panther little more than a faceless threat to the greater good. It makes you want to scream— _ no, that’s not what he was, let me see him like  _ I  _ saw him, bathed in golds and oranges and reds and the most wonderful smile I’ve ever known _ —but your own memory betrays you and you can only watch him fall.

Despite all of this, you’re damn good at what you do, and you rise quickly through the ranks, along the way receiving an honorary surname—Dawn. There’s no special ceremony when you get it; most agents who have them don’t care too much about their honorifics, they rarely ever use them. But for you, well, it means a lot to you. You’d never had a last name before, and you smile as you say it to yourself in the holo-mirror for the first time. Addax Dawn. Not one thing, not a vessel of something else but a person, built from the Diaspora and the Evening both but defined solely by neither. It feels good when the next time you see Jamil, your partner, she smiles and calls you Agent Dawn, and soon it feels like you’ve had that name all along.

 

It’s been ten years and you’re in Memorial Square in Centralia, listening to Ibex of all people give a speech. As infuriating as it is to see him in the public eye again—made worse by him being an incredibly good speaker, as always—it all becomes worth it when you spot a man in the crowd. At first you think you’re just being ridiculous, this is just another instance of you comparing people to  _ him _ on some kind of instinct like you did with the Joie girl, but then the sky opens up, and he turns around.

Everything hits you at once and you’re at a loss—for words, for breath, for explanation. He smiles at you, starting to walk in your direction and  _ oh god that smile _ , it makes you forget it’s cold outside. It makes you forget your own damn name.

“Addax.” He says, and you remember. Your name sounds so  _ right  _ on his lips. He’s standing in front of you now.

“Jace.” You say, grabbing his arm to see that it isn’t a hologram or a trick or a dream. “You’re alive.”

Jace nods. “Yeah. I am.” He pauses, taking your free hand in his. “I missed you.”

And then, all at once, you remember what you did to him. “God, Jace, I’m so sorry for what happened back then, it’s all my fault, I—”

He squeezes your hand. “Addax, it’s okay. I understand why you did it now. It was the only way to end the war.” He seems so much like the Jace you knew ten years ago: the same sincerity, the same warmth, but with a new air of confidence. It suits him well. “All that matters is that you’re here now, okay?” His eyes are watering.

You can’t even respond, you just collapse into his arms as you begin to cry. Jace, despite being several inches shorter than you, holds you just fine. The two of you stay like that for a few seconds, and it feels like you’re alone—until someone in the crowds bumps into you and you’re both jolted back to reality.

“Do you want to come back to my place? It’s not too far.” Jace asks, and you nod and follow his lead.

 

Your final name is a promise. It begins five years later, not long after the whole sector came together to defeat Rigor once and for all. The past few months have been an uneasy mix of mourning and celebration. You’re down on one knee. You just asked Jace, beautiful Jace, the love of your goddamn life, to spend the rest of his life with you. He says yes, and kneels down to wrap his arms around your neck and kiss you until you’re both crying tears of joy. 

“Hey,” Jace pulls back, beaming. “You’re my fiance.”

You nod, smiling back. You’ll never stop smiling back. “Hey, you’re gonna be my husband.”

Jace’s smile grows wider. And then he cocks his head, thinking. “Are we gonna go with Dawn-Rethal? Or Rethal-Dawn?”

“I’ve always liked Rethal-Dawn.”

“Kinda like the spaceport.”

“Yeah.”

“Jace and Addax Rethal-Dawn. It’s perfect.” He leans in to kiss you again, and everything is right with the world.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks 4 reading, u can find me on twitter crying 24/7 about these boys at twitter dot com slash jaceaddax


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